


Count On Me

by dreamwreck



Series: Count On Me [1]
Category: To the Moon Series (Video Games)
Genre: F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Illness, Pills, Vomiting, can be platonic or romantic rosawatts, eva cares about neil dangit, eva would kill for neil and that's a fact, humor is a defense mechanism, neil fears vulnerability dangit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-09
Updated: 2020-10-07
Packaged: 2021-02-28 04:40:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,093
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22638580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dreamwreck/pseuds/dreamwreck
Summary: Eva tries to be there for Neil in the ways she can, but there's only so much you can do for a friend who refuses your help. (One-shot. Wholesome RosaWatts. I can't write summaries. Gotta be the change I wish to see in the world and write my own RosaWatts fics, huh?)
Relationships: Eva Rosalene & Neil Watts, Eva Rosalene/Neil Watts, Rosawatts - Relationship
Series: Count On Me [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1959805
Comments: 20
Kudos: 55





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Положись на меня](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24214135) by [Merryada](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merryada/pseuds/Merryada)



To calm herself down, Eva would count anything. It didn’t matter what it was, so long as she started from zero and worked her way up. It was usually as simple as that. She counted the scrapes and smudges on the off-white linoleum while Neil puked on the other side of the third floor bathroom door.

There were several dark streaks left by rubber shoe soles. Fifty-two. There were fifty-two smudges on the surrounding eight tiles alone. A maintenance cart had made a mark that stretched nearly the entire length of the hall. Eva wondered: should the long streak count for more than one? Neil spat into the toilet three times.

The men’s restroom went awfully quiet for twenty-eight seconds. Leaning against the door, Eva listened for any reason not to kick it down. Faintly, she heard Neil exhaling, long and slow, catching his breath. He sniffed once.

“Let me know what I can do,” she called in.

“Got all I need right here,” Neil answered. “Water, breath mints, a little window. I could last for days.”

Eva rubbed tiny circles into her temple. “Just let me know.”

“You know,” Neil huffed, “there’s something to be said of this. Hanging around while I literally spill my guts --”

The rest was lost to violent retching. There was a red mark near the wall and a blue streak of permanent marker. Lord knows how that got there. Neil coughed thirteen times.

“What do you think it was?” Eva asked.

“Uh…” The toilet flushed.

“Didn’t catch that.”

“Just something I ate, probably.”

That wasn’t right. Neil had a garbage disposal for a stomach. Eva knew, though, that she wouldn’t get anywhere contradicting him outright.

She seated herself outside of the men’s bathroom to rest her legs, listening to the water run for one minute. She’d been on her feet all day, running reports back and forth. It had been a day of workplace housekeeping with little real excitement until Neil burst from his office, peckish and panicked, and rushed down the hall like the devil was close behind. It wasn’t the excitement Eva had hoped for.

“How about you go home early today?” she suggested.

The water shut off. “Nah. Day’s almost over.” Neil pulled four paper towels from the dispenser.

“Exactly,” Eva said. “You’ll only miss a few hours that you can make up tomorrow. No harm done.”

“Nah,” Neil said.

“You’ve got plenty of sick leave saved up.”

Something rattled on the other side of the door. Neil gently screwed the pill bottle lid back on. The sink ran again.

“Tylenol probably isn’t the best thing to pop, Neil,” Eva called. “You’ll want to try and eat something with those or you’ll just keep feeling sick.”

She assumed that’s what it was. Neil kept his office drawer stashed with an unholy arsenal of over-the-counter pain relievers for the headaches that usually followed an all-nighter. Honestly, it was a miracle his stomach was still intact at all. He functioned exclusively off a diet of black coffee and little white pills. He kept his mini-fridge stuffed to the brim with energy drinks and ice packs. The only reason Eva didn’t worry more than she probably should have was because she knew Neil, and had for a long time. That’s just who he was: a terrifyingly stable imbalance of Redbull and Advil. She was convinced that it was the only reason (beside her help, of course) that he’d gotten through college.

Neil didn’t respond. A thick silence filled the space. Beneath the weight of her own overbearance, Eva returned her attention to the floor.

The women’s bathroom door was four tiles away from the men’s. The nearest fluorescent tube light (the horrid things...) flickered in a series of five irregular beats before steadying out, but it always flickered in fives. There were two exit signs in this hallway. 

She’d never noticed the dimensions of the hallway before: eight tiles wide. It wasn’t important. It didn’t spark any epiphany. But now that she knew that the third floor hallway was eight tiles wide, Eva would never forget it. Now, every morning when she stepped off the elevator and walked down to her office, she’d notice the eight tile width and think about Neil puking his guts out, this terrible waiting game, and how the color had completely gone from his face when he finally emerged.

Rosa and Neil had known each other for twenty-five years. They’d met in the first grade. She was seven; he was six. They’d had a total of eleven classes together through high school. Neil was in and out of detention for minor disruptions while Eva only ever got detention once. That was in the tenth grade. Carson Adams had hit Neil three times. Eva hit Carson once. It was enough. 

In college, the longest Neil had gone without sleep was fifty-six hours to study for his entrance exams. He snuck in a three hour nap before his first test. He never once got physically ill.

Eva rose to her feet while Neil took a moment to clean his glasses on the end of his lab coat.

“Please hold all disapproving and-or disconcerted expressions until I have regained the gift of sight,” Neil said. He slipped the frames back onto his face, flashing a smile and wiggling his fingers with a magician’s flair. “Ta da!”

Looking up at him, Eva crossed her arms. “Truly remarkable. Now go home.”

Neil shrugged. “A new stack of maintenance reports just came in. I’m stuck here, same as everyone else.”

“Do them tomorrow,” Eva pressed. “You look terrible.”

Neil pressed a hand to his heart, shaking the pills in his pocket. “Thank you, I’m touched. I’ll write that one in my diary tonight.”

Turning on a heel, he gave a halfhearted wink and started for his office. Eva followed close at his shoulder. She didn’t like that he hadn’t really, truly looked her in the eyes yet today. 

“Cut that out. Seriously. Take the extra hours to see your doctor.”

Without missing a beat, Neil stopped so suddenly, they collided shoulders. “Dr. Rosalene, I’m flattered, but that would be completely unprofessional -- “

Scoffing, Eva marched on. If he wasn’t going to take this seriously, fine. She wouldn’t press any further.

“I’m kidding! Come on, Eva. Eva!” Neil ran after her at first, his rubbers heels striking the linoleum, but he settled for matching her walking pace. 

“You don’t get sick, Neil,” Eva said, looking straight ahead.

Neil steadied his breathing. “Just something I ate. You know the cafeteria salads can be utterly rancid.”

They stopped between their two office doors. Eva’s hung wide open; Neil’s was locked. Even in the scramble, he had time to pull his door shut.

“Just take it easy,” Eva said. “Eat something with...whatever it is you’re taking.”

“Tylenol,” Neil affirmed.

“Drink lots of water,” Eva said. 

Neil pulled an office key from his pants pocket. “Right.”

“Go to bed early.”

“Mhm.” Neil unlocked the door.

“Don’t mix pills and Monster. Actually, just skip the Monster today.”

“I will make no such promises,” Neil smirked. He gave a little wave and a tight-lipped grin before disappearing behind yet another door.

He left Eva in the hallway. She’d always been certain that if Neil needed to talk to her about anything, he would in his own way, because he always had, though they’d usually waste ample time beating bushes.

But those conversations always came about only after a little prodding on Eva’s part. And given the reminder that there was someone in his life who wanted to listen and wanted to help in any way they could, his guarded soul would, in its own time, open naturally to the daunting prospect of vulnerability. Eva just wished he’d get on with it already.

She took a slow breath. In his own time, always. Knowing Neil for so long had certainly made her far more patient than (she believed) she would have been otherwise. It was a good thing. A very good thing. She’d learned to take matters a little slower than she often wanted. Even so, she had an inexplicable sense of being on the clock, fighting a quiet countdown, which she attributed to a desperate desire to see her friend well again.

She left that for another time. Dr. Eva Rosalene stepped into her office and faced a more immediate task -- the mountain of paperwork awaiting her return -- failing to overhear the faint jingle of pills tumbling from their bottle into Dr. Neil Watts’ shaking hand.


	2. Count On You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When the office door closes, Neil can be alone in his own world. That's not always a good thing.  
> (Remember when I said this was a one-shot? Boy, that never works out well for me.)

Of all things, Neil missed spaghetti the most. Jarred red sauce, fifty-cent pasta, pre-grated parmesan (if he was feeling especially bougie). Nothing could beat it. He didn’t miss the reflux, but he’d deck his esophageal halls with ulcers if it meant eating a real meal, a heaping bowl of comfort food that would leave him full and sluggish and knock Insomnia flat on its back.

Neil ran his thumb over a medicine-purple protein bar wrapper, smoothing out the perforated ends between the flesh of his thumb and index finger. The yellow POWER BAR logo rippled and glimmered under his office lights like a cheap trick. 

Clearly, the graphic designers had no idea that their chosen font and colors made the meal replacement look like a cartoon villain’s mind-controlling sugar bar. This one was supposed to taste vaguely reminiscent of peanut butter, which he’d discovered was easier to stomach than the artificial vanilla flavor that stuck to his tongue for hours after the fact.

He tore the wrapping down the middle. The sickly brown bar revealed itself, shedding its tacky cape. 

He took a vengeful bite out of the bar, feeling as triumphant as he possibly could while chewing something that tasted like cardboard soaked in old peanut oil. Just last week, these weren’t so bad. He could stomach them and they had tasted pretty decent. 

'I was thinking of you the entire time,' he’d eventually say to a heaping bowl of angel hair pasta and marinara. 

Eventually. One day, soon. When all this was over, Neil could quit skipping meals and popping pain pills like tic tacs and Mentos.

The single bite of bar began to disintegrate in his mouth the same way a bad piece of gum chewed too long turns into a compound of sand and slime. Neil choked the mixture down and lunged for his water bottle. Empty. He turned to the mini fridge and pulled out an ice cold energy drink that had been sitting on standby, untouched, for months.

“Don’t tell Eva,” Neil said, snapping the tab open in the vacant room. The drink went down cold and sweet, washing the gritty paste from his tongue. He’d regret the caffeine in an hour or two, but for now, the familiar bubbles were worth whatever he had coming later.

A lot of things had become worth it recently. He banished the pitiful excuse for a protein bar to the bottom drawer, sitting down in his desk chair, staring at the paperwork that so desperately needed filing. A fib, of course. He’d never filed paperwork on time in his life. Lying to Eva....Neil had yet to discern if that was worth keeping any secret.

What secret? In the end, what could be worth keeping from her? That Neil Watts was mortal? Extraordinary, but mortal. Extraordinarily mortal.

He thought of Eva sitting outside the men’s room while he retched, stretching to keep pace with him in the hall, reminding him about the simple things. There is so much said in reminding someone to take care of themselves in the little ways, to drink water, to take time. Neil wished he were a better listener, that his pride would crumble for a day or two, long enough for him to set good habits and be honest -- with himself, with Eva, with everyone.

Fluorescent humming grated his ears, burned his eyes. He felt new sickness swelling. He shut his eyes to the room’s blue white. 

He’d worry a lot less if Eva would just let it drop. She cared too much, that was her problem. She was usually good at hiding it. At work, of course, surrounded all day by dying people and their repressed traumas, you need to find a way to push through it all without completely breaking down, balancing visible empathy with healthy detachment. 

Crying in front of the clients doesn’t get the job done, and it certainly doesn’t look good on evaluations. 

Their particular line of work called for expert compartmentalization. Eva had mastered concealing a naturally compassionate disposition behind cold professionalism, efficiency, and control. It was never just another day at the office for her, even if she’d sometimes seem unfeeling when the chips were down.

Neil knew her too well. She always wanted to help. She was a problem solver, always trained on an objective, never one to dwell, to stutter-step, to second guess. She never let things lie. Why should a problem go unsolved?

He used to hold that against her, that she couldn’t let things be, that she could get a little control-crazy when things shifted from their right places into wrong places, drifting away from order like moons out of orbit. But she wasn’t the one who had to cheat on her entrance exams. And between the two of them, she seemed to have her life under control. 

Neil Watts had looked to Eva Rosalene for a lifetime of answers. He could count on her for anything. She always came in clutch (he’d been watching a lot of Esports streams lately, picking up on the lingo during his late night nausea fits).

It wasn’t a question of whether or not Eva cared about him. It was a question of, if Neil truly believed in Eva Rosalene, why on God’s green earth had he not told her a lick of truth about what was really going on? He dove down for a good answer, or even a scrap of a convoluted selfish reasoning, but resurfaced empty. 

In his coat pocket, a little blue bottle pressed against Neil’s thigh. He crossed his arms, but he only grew more aware of the light pressure resting there. It annoyed him, more than anything, like feeling a strand of hair brush along your skin, but just when you think you’ve swiped it away, there it is again, brushing just light enough to frustrate, to aggravate, to piss you off. Neil bounced his knee, trying to shake the coat off his leg, but the bump beneath the white cloth just moused its way back and forth, prodding. 

He should do that paperwork. Listen to music or something to pass the time.

His stomach roiled. Neil slipped a hand into his pocket. He closed his fist around the smooth bottle, ran his thumb over the cap, catching his thumbnail along the ridges there. Comforting, he thought. The action really did calm his nerves.

Eva was across the hall. Fifteen steps away. A knock away. A conversation away.

Neil didn’t bother to set a stopwatch so he never knew how long he sat there, his thumb running back and forth over the ridges in the lid while his mind wandered, imagining the many ways that conversation could go, the look on Eva’s face, the disappointment. Daydream Neil started crying, but Real Neil didn’t think that was very dignified, so he started from the beginning, approaching Dr. Eva Rosalene in her office. Figuring she’d probably be busy, he reset to the cafeteria. A nice talk over lunch. When Eva burst into tears and people from the surrounding tables looked their way, Neil chose the park, even though they weren’t in the habit of going to the park together and never had been. But it was quiet, undisturbed. A gorgeous day in this self-revising simulation. He guided Eva to a bench. They sat down. Eva told him to take his time, that she knew something was wrong, that she was glad Neil could finally talk to her. Yes, he was ready. It would be amazing to finally say it out loud. To someone else. To confide. To confess….

He opened his eyes to the harsh light.

Confess? What was that word doing, flitting about in his stream of consciousness?

An email notification pinged on his desktop. He moved to open it with a click. It read: 

If you’re up for it, they’re showing Inception and the Cowboy Bebop movie tonight. It’s the weirdest double feature ever so I have to go, it’s the law.

Popcorn’s light on the stomach, right? Let me know, my treat. --Eva

Perfect. He could talk to her then. Simple, easy as that. All that melodramatic daydreaming over nothing. He could talk to her then. Besides: free food.

Neil’s stomach suddenly felt very, very empty. His usual nausea felt like he was too full and ready to burst.

But it suddenly felt as if something small inside were eating away at everything, the lining and the tissue and the bile, hungrily consuming out of a gluttonous jealousy that which consumes. And when there would be nothing left, that small something would eat the air and the Nothing until an impossible vacuum remained. And Neil would also remain, nothing more than a container to conceal a parasitic anomaly, cursed never to be filled again. 

His hand closed around the little blue bottle. The pills inside stirred, knocking against the walls of their plastic prison.

The emptiness in his stomach slowly spread into his hips and ribs, knees and neck, his head and the space behind his eyes, until his whole body felt hollow and the hollow spaces felt sore.

This moment was nearly one of those moments that change everything. Very important, nearly pivotal, but not to be realized, lacking the crucial self-awareness that would have sent things this way and that, particularly along different this-es and better thats. The manner in which a single rock falls prevents or triggers a landslide.

Neil drew the bottle from his pocket, poured two little white pills into his palm, tossed them back. They scraped down the dry walls of his throat, as though clawing for a foothold, before eventually settling in the cavern of his stomach, and almost instantaneously, the pain began to dwindle.

Neil didn’t stop to consider the impossibility of this. If he had, it would have made all the difference. But he didn’t, so it did not, and things seemed to remain relatively the same, the distant sound of tumbling rocks drowned by electric humming.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 2:  
> Ended up somewhere unexpected, as writing usually does. My fingers like to run without me sometimes. Pleasant surprises though! Thank you for supporting "Count On Me"! You all are the best :)
> 
> Wubnjeft
> 
> ...
> 
> I've been reading a lot of science fiction lately.  
> Let me know if you solve the cipher.

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to explore with Eva's perspective as Neil's health declines. With all the Unknown™ surrounding his illness, what do the symptoms look like to a friend who can easily attribute them to other causes?
> 
> Leave a comment if you liked!


End file.
